Right of the prairie

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Movie
German title Right of the prairie
Original title My darling clementine
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1946
length 92 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director John Ford
script Samuel G. Engel ,
Winston Miller ,
Sam Hellman (Screen Story)
production Samuel G. Engel
music Cyril J. Mockridge
camera Joseph MacDonald
cut Dorothy Spencer
occupation

Faustrecht der Prärie (Original title: My Darling Clementine , German alternative title: Tombstone and Mein Liebling Clementine ) is an American film by John Ford from 1946 . The western is based on the 1931 biography of Wyatt Earp , Frontier Marshal by Stuart N. Lake . Henry Fonda plays the marshal who competes against the Clanton family to avenge his brother's death. After Fords Stagecoach initiated the renaissance of the modern western in 1939, the law of the prairie is another step in the director's development towards serious, "adult" themes in westerns, culminating in The Black Falcon (1956). Law of the prairie , the main theme of which is the establishment of a civilized society in the border region of the Wild West, is generally considered a classic of the genre.

action

Arizona in 1882: brothers Wyatt , Virgil, Morgan and James Earp drive a herd of cattle across the country. They rested near the town of Tombstone . The three older brothers ride into town, leaving the youngest brother James with the herd. Tombstone is ruled by lawlessness and chaos. As Wyatt a drunken and rampaging Indians tame, it is the office of the marshals plotted. Wyatt refuses at first, but after the brothers discover that James has been murdered and the flock stolen, he takes office to find his brother's murderers. After initial suspicion, the TB- sick doctor and player Doc Holliday , the most powerful man in Tombstone, trusts the new marshal. Wyatt is also impressed by the torn drinker Holliday when he touches the words of the Hamlet monologue, which the drunken actor has forgotten, at a theater performance in front of the cheering audience of tombstones . Wyatt Earp, freshly shaved and elegantly dressed, quickly finds his way around his new office and demonstrates his authority to the city.

Tombstone, here a picture from around 1881, is the scene of Faustrecht der Prärie

The nurse Clementine Carter travels from the eastern United States to bring her former fiancé Holliday back. Holliday, meanwhile in a relationship with the barmaid Chihuahua, rejects her and tells her to leave. On Sunday morning the church bells of the still unfinished church ring for the first time in Tombstone. The Righteous Citizens Tombstones celebrate the event with a dance on the church floor to which Wyatt Clementine performs.

In their search for the murderers, the Clantons, the despotic Old Man Clanton and his four sons, are initially targeted by the Earps, but Wyatt finds a medal that was in James' possession with Chihuahua. When Wyatt tries to arrest Doc Holliday as his brother's suspected murderer, Chihuahua confesses that she received the medal from Billy Clanton. During this confession, Billy Clanton shoots Chihuahua. The fugitive Billy is pursued by Virgil Earp, but Old Man Clanton shoots the pursuer. Doc Holliday tries emergency surgery to save the seriously injured Chihuahua, but his efforts are in vain. Chihuahua dies as a result of her injury.

Wyatt and Morgan Earp are challenged by the Clantons, who have now finally turned out to be their brother's murderer, to a duel at dawn on the O. K. Corral . Doc Holliday, badly marked by the death of Chihuahua, joins the Earps to face the Clantons for a showdown . All the Clantons die in the shootout and Doc Holliday, too, shaken by a coughing fit, is killed by enemy bullets. Clementine decides to stay in Tombstone as a school teacher and nurse. Wyatt, who is leaving with Morgan to visit her father, says goodbye to her with a kiss and promises to come back.

History of origin

Script and preproduction

In 1931 Stuart N. Lake published the book Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal , which euphemized and glorified Earp's life story according to his own specifications. After quickly becoming a bestseller, it was filmed twice by 20th Century Fox : in 1934 with George O'Brien as Earp and in 1939, based on a script by Sam Hellman , directed by Allan Dwan, with Randolph Scott as Earp and Cesar Romero as Doc Holliday . In November 1945 Darryl F. Zanuck selected the material as a template for the film, which John Ford owed Fox under his contract for a total of ten films, and had Winston Miller write a script. Ford, just returned from the military, agreed to the project after it was promised that Henry Fonda and Tyrone Power could take on the leading roles. The pre-war fee of 85,000 US dollars for Ford's directorial work was increased to 150,000 US dollars. Although Ford later claimed to have never seen the Dwan film, Faustrecht of the Prairie shows both content and staging similarities to Dwan's version of the material. The beginning of the film with the rioting Indian in Tombstone, for example, is an almost identical takeover from Hellman's script from 1939; even the Indian's actor is the same. Hellman was due to these similarities in My Darling Clementine a screen credit as the author of the underlying film history.

Ford reworked Miller's script, brought some humor into the script, and deleted some of the dialog that he saw as unnecessary in order to focus more on the visual impact of the film. After Tyrone Power was not available for the role of Doc Holliday after all and the ideas of having Douglas Fairbanks Jr. , Vincent Price or James Stewart play the role were discarded, Victor Mature was finally hired, and those responsible worried whether that would muscular powerhouse Mature was able to portray the terminally ill, tubercular Holliday in an appropriate manner. Like Ford and Fonda, he had just returned from military service and played his first post-war role in Faustrecht der Prärie . Jeanne Crain was initially considered for the female lead in Clementine , but Ford felt the unknown Downs was a better choice for the role than the established Crain.

Production and post-production

Monument Valley: "Ford's Chosen Place for Moral Disputes"

The shooting of Fist Law of the Prairie took place from May to June 1946 in Kayenta , Arizona and in the adjacent Monument Valley . The budget was two million dollars, with the scenery for the city of Tombstone alone accounting for $ 250,000. Zanuck was not satisfied with the rough cut of the turned material. After a trial demonstration, he told Ford in a June 25, 1946 memo that he intended to make extensive cuts. Zanucks, according to McBride, "impatience with Ford's casual style, his emphasis on moods and embellishments" led him to personally remove about ten minutes of material from the film in order to make the story more stringent in his eyes and less concerned with funny and atmospheric moments do. In addition, Zanuck ordered that in some scenes the soundtrack, which was sparsely and simply conceived by Ford and mainly laid out on the table , should be replaced with lush and more dramatic orchestrated music sequences. In July 1946, Fox Lloyd Bacon's in- house director shot a few scenes for the film, including a few takes of Earp at his brother's grave and the scene when Doc asked Clementine on a nightly porch to leave town. The most important shot that was subsequently filmed was the kiss Earp Clementine gives in the farewell scene. Ford actually wanted the relationship between the two to be more ambivalent and open towards the end of the film. The interventions in his film on the part of the producing film company made Ford strive for artistic and production-related freedom in the years to come. Ford turned down an offer from Zanuck to continue directing at Fox for $ 600,000 a year.

reception

Right of the Prairie was released in US cinemas on November 7, 1946. Distribution in West Germany started on November 1, 1949. The film grossed 2,800,000 US dollars in its first evaluation round in the United States. Worldwide theatrical revenue was US $ 4,500,000. The film brought back its high costs for the time, but was not considered a particular box-office hit. On April 28, 1947, a radio play version of the film was recorded at the Lux Radio Theater by, among others, Henry Fonda, Cathy Downs and Richard Conte and broadcast on the radio.

Contemporary criticism

The film critics were mostly benevolent of Ford's work, but enthusiastic reactions were rare. TIME wrote on November 11, 1946 that the film was "a horse opera for high demands". Ford created “more than just an intelligent retelling of a modern legend”. Ray Lanning of the Motion Picture Herald , in his review of October 12, 1946, found the film “calm, casual, almost devoid of any plot”. However, he was “remarkable because of the imaginative use of the raw, sometimes brutal material to turn it into an atmospheric, almost to create poetic film ”. Richard Griffith was more enthusiastic in New Movies magazine in January 1947. The law of the prairie is “not only an outstanding Western, but also a […] multi-layered work of the imagination”. He portrays the West “as the Americans feel it deep inside.” Henry Fonda is “the self-confident interpreter of a mood that has now disappeared as if he were a historian or a psychologist ”.

Bosley Crowther summed up in the New York Times on December 29, 1946 that the film was "a little too laden with Western conventions to catch up [with Stagecoach]." The demarcation between heroes and villains is too obvious. On October 9, 1946, Variety stated in an otherwise positive review that the film "sometimes [...] faltered in order to allow Ford to pursue an artificial showmanship". Manny Farber wrote in The New Republic on December 16, 1946 that the prairie prairie law was "a shining example of how pompous filmmaking can ruin the wonderful history of the West." The film focuses "on civic awareness, jokes and folklore rather than rock-hard." Action ".

In its issue 4/65, the film critics judged that the law of the prairie was "rightly [...] celebrated as one of the most beautiful and poetic westerns". In any case, it was "Ford's most cohesive film [...], a real melodrama , with the poetry, lyricism and the excessive reality content of a copy." It was established that there was "a strict three-way division into overture, middle movement and coda", especially in the middle section the "Ford racism " comes into play, and "the celebration of the landscape that reaches to the point of idolatry." The Sunday morning scene is "part of the classic part of the Western". The judgment in the Catholic Film Critics' Handbook V, 6000 Films (1963), wasless enthusiastic and ratedthe film as slightly above average .

Awards

Law of the prairie won the 1948 Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani award for the best foreign language film. In 1991 the film was National Film Registry added

Aftermath

Law of the prairie is one of the development points between the first Westerns that were not only consumable by children and young people at the beginning of the 1940s ( Stagecoach (1939), The Westerner (1940), Raid of the Ogalalla (1941) and others) and the "psychological" or noble Westerners at the beginning of the 1950s with their conflict-laden heroes ( Red River (1948), Persecuted (1947), Winchester '73 (1950) and others). Hanisch notes that the law of the prairie is “a film of maturity” that has little in common with the horse operas of days gone by. With the law of the prairie , the western had "finally lost its innocence" and had "now become largely entertaining for an adult audience". A number of other film adaptations of the legend about Earp and Holliday followed ( Zwei reckoning (1957), The five Outlaws (1967), Doc (1971), Tombstone (1993), Wyatt Earp - The life of a legend (1994) and others) which, however, in their basic statement all turned out to be significantly darker and more pessimistic than the law of the prairie .

Film studies assessment

Today the law of the prairie is one of the classics of the genre with its predominantly optimistic mood; a film that "wholeheartedly celebrates the arrival of justice, law and civilization in the west through the character of Fondas Earp," Hardy notes. For Jeier, the film is a “homage to the pioneering spirit” that Ford mourns “in wistful images” and conjures up in rituals such as the dances shown. Hembus states that Ford's work is "the greatest mythopoetic western", the story "of a man whose sense of family turns into a sense of community and who thus finds his mission to bring law and order to the West". Loew describes the film as the “quintessence of western film”, which combines both naivety and sentimentality, “carried by pictorial magic”.

Baxter states that the law of the prairie is "one of Ford's most complete and moving films" that reflects Ford's "ongoing interest in the influence of civilization on border values." For Clapham, the qualities of the film lie particularly in Ford's distinctive atmospheric images: “The action is fast, beautifully photographed, and the story is well told. But we will always remember Prairie Law of the Fist for its other qualities - for the leisurely lullings and the time-outs that are taken. Here Ford is negligent with itself [...], but the negligence is all successful and as if enchanted. " Seeßlen also emphasizes the calm sequences and describes the film as "Ford's poetic vision of life in the community on the border, whose utopian moments come to fruition above all in moments of calm"

Kitses describes Faustrecht of the prairie as "an absolute jewel [...], one of the masterpieces of classic American film" and "a loving hymn to civilization". “With the unfolding strategy of beguiling pauses, digressions and merrymaking”, Faustrecht leads the prairie “into a characteristic world that stubbornly insists on its own truthfulness”. Hanisch calls the film “one of the most beautiful westerns in the history of this genre, […] tells […] in extraordinarily impressive pictures.” Faustrecht of the prairie is “a westerner's western,” judges Eyman. The film is "taciturn, straightforward, open-minded and timelessly modern in its thoughtful mood and its dark undertones".

Film analysis

Staging

Visual style

From the very first sequences, Ford makes it clear that he wants to depict a myth of the West and its legendary protagonists. In half-close shots with the camera low , he shows the Earp brothers, one after the other, as they quietly and deliberately go about their work in the wild while riding on their horses. Kitses notes that in their grandeur they appear "like moving statues." According to Place, Ford uses the viewer's previous knowledge of the legend of Earp “to heighten the myth he creates” and uses an “economical, expressionistic visual style” for this purpose . “With mostly a static camera, the director creates tableau-like compositions in the style earlier photographs. Jeier notes that the story is told “in calm lyrical images, which place the city and its people against the vast sky and the gigantic rocks of Monument Valley.” The sky “a la El Greco ”, as Eyman notes, is also always present in the scenes that take place in the city. The surrounding landscape between the widely spaced houses always remains in view; Tombstone is becoming an urban polity, but the wilderness is not yet pushed back.

Ford does not use realistic modes of representation, but puts his idea of ​​the Wild West, which, according to Place, is primarily aimed at “moral, mythical and poetic truth”, into images of cinematic imagination: the city of Tombstone is actually not in Monument Valley and even the large saguaro cacti , which are always featured prominently when the relationship between Wyatt and Clementine is discussed, do not grow there. Ford's lyrical, naive visual style culminates in the sequence showing Wyatt and Clementine walking together to dance in the unfinished church. “In one of the most beautiful walks in film history,” said Prinzler, Ford “celebrated the West and America as a community capable of perfecting,” said Coyne. The dance company under waving American flags is presented with image sections that are “perfectly chosen like a painter's composition,” as Loew notes. He adds: "Every scene could make a painting".

Conflict situations are first and foremost implemented visually. In the saloon scenes, for example, the mise-en-scène is staggered into the depth of the room and implemented with a great depth of field , which serves to "plant the figures in their surroundings," says Kitses. The vastness of the wilderness and the conflicts that prevail there are carried into the long, low rooms of the saloon, which are also strongly illuminated in the background. Ford emphasizes the emerging conflict between Wyatt and Doc by means of an axis jump between the close-ups of the two actors.

dramaturgy

According to Hanisch, Ford strengthens the effectiveness of its story by letting it play in just a few days, on a single weekend. He uses "a dramaturgy of the unity of time and place". The choice of location means that the story is "immediately isolated (in time, history and location)," said Place. This creates "a closed world [...] in which the story can unfold". The well-known story that ends with the shooting at OK Corral provides the big framework for this. Clapham explains: "There are deviations, a motive for revenge with Fonda and the jealous interference of a dancer [...], but the path leads unerringly to this meeting at the corral." This stringent course of action is stopped again and again and delayed by the atmospheric "timeouts" . Clapham sums it up: “It's a film of touching shots - Fonda sitting there and sharing his boots and balance as the world passes by; Fonda the peacemaker, righteous in the church; Fonda with an old-fashioned idea of ​​the frontier, politely leading his lady to dance outdoors ”. Hanisch explains that in such scenes “the whole poetry of this director becomes apparent.” They are “not seldom much more impressive than the turbulent action scenes”. This certainly includes the scene when Wyatt Earp in a pensive mood asks the bar owner: "Have you ever loved a woman?" And he replies: "I was always just an innkeeper".

Ford is guided by the representation of Fonda. Eyman notes that the director "adjusts the entire film to Fonda's determined, elegant rhythm." Place confirms that "Fonda's specific personality," his "restrained, stiff trait," was "perhaps best used by Ford's elegiac direction." . According to Hanisch, Fondas Earp is “the honest hero, a man of strong calm”. According to Loew, his “relaxed, virile strength, nonchalance, monosyllabicness and masculinity” are filmed in the famous scene in which Fonda, sitting relaxed on a veranda and balancing on a chair, demonstrates his “inner balance”.

Ford emphasizes the dramatic contrast between Doc Holliday and Chihuahua on the one hand and Wyatt Earp and Clementine on the other hand by assigning the night scenes to the first couple and the day scenes to the second. The night, staged as a contrasting fight between darkness and light with expressive shadows, is the wild and lawless time that is coming to an end, for which Doc and Chihuahua stand up. With Earp and Clementine, Jeier says, “the civilized phase in the history of Tombstone begins”. The day scenes with their open, unobstructed view and the “optimistic” weather stand for this.

Sound and music

The use of music in Faustrecht der Prärie under the musical direction of Alfred Newman is largely diegetic . Based on the plot, the music makes “comments on the plot or the relationship between the protagonists,” says Loew. Ford uses the melodies of folk songs like the eponymous My Darling Clementine or hymns like Shall We Gather at the River? . In the final climax of the shootout, however, Ford does not use any music. Only the sounds of the wind and the boots and the gunshots can be heard. Says Eyman: "If silence can be deafening, it is here."

Themes and motifs

Historical authenticity

The historic Wyatt Earp around 1881, portrayed in the film by Henry Fonda

Ford claimed he met Wyatt Earp himself shortly before his death in the 1920s. Despite Ford's self-declared claim to want to reproduce Earp's story authentically, the film has a number of historical inaccuracies and misinterpretations. The events at OK Corral took place in 1881 and not in 1882. Doc Holliday, who was a dentist and not a surgeon, did not perish on the OK Corral but died 6 years later of TB in a sanatorium. Old Clanton was not a victim of the shooting either; he was dead earlier. Wyatt Earp was not Marshal of Tombstone, but his brother Virgil. In reality, Virgil was Wyatt's older brother, not Morgan. In addition, the pursuit of Billy Clanton by Virgil Earp (in the film the dramaturgical reason for the shoot out at OK Corral) never took place: Billy Clanton only died in the shooting at OK Corral, his "pursuer" Virgil was not shot in the back by Billy's father Victim, but of pneumonia in 1905. It was Morgan, however, who in 1882, so only after the OK Corral fight, died in an act of revenge by suspected Clanton sympathizers. The supposedly youngest Earp brother James "Cooksey" Earp was not born in 1864, but in 1841. That means he was not the youngest Earp brother but, on the contrary, the oldest. He did not die at the age of 18 by Clanton hand, but passed away peacefully at the age of 84 in 1926. Wyatt Earp was not the model law enforcement officer, to whom he hyped himself up, but a gambler and businessman in the red light district. The historic dispute with the Clantons erupted in the battle for market share in gambling, prostitution and cattle theft in Tombstone. The law of the prairie is therefore not a historically accurate, but a “poetic, deliberately mythical retelling of the legend of Wyatt Earp.” French judges the truth of the film: “According to the relevant criteria of 1946, it looked quite realistic, although it was in was in any way a total misinterpretation of the events that led to the exchange of fire at the OK Corral , but [...] none [of the subsequent film adaptations of the Earp legend] achieved the quality of truth as with Ford, although with him it was just a fabricated myth " .

Establishment of civil society

Ford portrays in Faustrecht the prairie , so Jeier, "the end of a wild time and its protagonists". Earp comes to Tombstone to avenge the death of his brother, but "little by little [...] the personal motive of revenge [...] becomes an obligation to the community as well", says Seeßlen. He becomes the bearer of civilization not only outwardly through his visits to the barber, but also in his inner attitude. Lenihan explains: “Ford's right of thumb on the prairie assigned […] Earp's fight against lawlessness to the broader scheme of the pioneer enforcing law and decency in a new, untamed land. While Earp has a family affair with the Clantons to settle, his actions are consistently interwoven with scenes of a thriving new society to clearly identify the hero with social progress ”. The symbol of this company foundation is the dance in church on Sunday mornings; a, as Kitses notes, “magical moment of cinema”. The value systems of the American East and West unite in a "symbolic marriage of East and West". Earp and Clementine are at this moment “the perfect (though primarily asexual) union between the best elements of the West and the East; the cool, controlled masculinity of the law enforcement officer complements the sensitive yet courageous nature of the lady from Boston, ”says Coyne.

Ford pays tribute with this "description of national myth-making". Tribute to sensitivities in American society that yearned for such value orientation after the privations and personal sacrifices of World War II. McBride analyzes: “Ford […] withdrew into the American past in order to find historical or mythical answers to the problems that troubled him in the present. [...] he was looking for what he believed to be the heart of the American value system. "Kitses adds:" At the point in his career where his vision of America is transcendent , Ford is more of the blooming garden that is to come , as one of the wilderness that exists ”.

Optimism and pessimism

The figure of Wyatt Earp, according to Place "one of the most charming and humane characters of Ford", stands in their optimistic view for Ford's naive vision of an exemplary society. Place emphasizes that Earp moves "between the best values ​​of the East and the West without a problem, but he is the last Ford hero to do so". As of the law of the prairie , Ford's main characters became increasingly bitter and lonely, culminating in the character of Ethan Edwards in The Black Hawk (1956) and that of the ransom Stoddard in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). This is particularly evident in the contrast in how Ford treats the Earp legend in Faustrecht der Prärie and 18 years later in Cheyenne . There, Ford's look at Earp is only distant and ironic; Earp appears as a “braggart and soldier of fortune”, as Hanisch notes, he and Holliday are “just clowns” according to Place.

In the figure of Doc Holliday, already in Faustrecht the prairie “the end of Ford's optimism is heralding,” as Hembus notes. Holliday is characterized by, according to Place, "an inability to come to terms with himself and the various aspects of his life"; a figure who "recognizes the signs of the times and wants to escape the approaching civilization through self-destruction," said Jeier. The two sides of his personality, being a doctor on the one hand and a player and drinker on the other, are "larger than life as with the classic tragic hero", as Place notes, in the close-up of his doctor's diploma on the wall with a whiskey bottle under it. Holliday throws a glass at the diploma in the film and smashes the frame with it. In connection with this tragic character disposition, Kitses also sees the reference to the monologue from Hamlet , which Holliday finishes instead of the drunken actor. Doc Holliday is like Hamlet "a divided soul that denies its past, [...] cursed and self-destructive". His counterpart is Clementine, who like Ophelia represents everything he denies. The fact that Holliday finally sacrifices himself for the cause of the community makes him a "true Ford hero" in Baxter's eyes, a martyr who lacks Earp's "very direct ambition".

Baxter takes an exotic single point of view in his assessment of the relationship between Earp and Holliday. He assumes it has a homosexual component and calls the law of the prairie Ford's "sexually [...] most complete film". As evidence for this, he cites that Earp once referred to Holliday in the film as "handsome", worried about his illness and expressed his interest in the feminine component of Holliday's personality in the "takeover" of his bride, a kind of skipping act.

Family, morals and parentage

The plot-defining conflict in Fist Law of the Prairie is a battle between two families, the Earps and the Clantons. Both families are similar in that they are determined by the overpowering father (who does not appear in the film with the Earps and is only assigned this position in the dialogues of the sons). Place states: "The Clantons are a reflection of the Earps, but an unnatural one". With the, according to Baxter, "almost magical meaning (...) that he gave to the fathers", Ford emphasizes the high value he attaches to a functioning, patriarchal family group. Baxter explains: "He was concerned about showing the family as a positive force, a social weapon that should be used to put the world in order." With its clear position in favor of the Earps, Ford is making a moral statement . McBride notes that in his "idealistic worldview" "the epic struggle between good (the Earps) and evil (the Clantons) contains no moral ambiguity".

The question of why Holliday and Chihuahua have to die in the film can also be treated from the point of view of the morality represented by Ford. Coyne's point of view is that they have to die because, in Ford's imagination, they are "morally not worth it to participate in the ideal borderland community that Ford [...] is designing." Ford's film is "not only mythical, but deeply moralistic" Hollidays and Chihuahua's real sin is "the sexual transgression of ethnic boundaries". In addition, she secretly got involved with one of the Clantons. Ford builds his female lead roles in completely opposite ways: The spirited, dark-haired, mysterious and provocative Chihuahua is opposed to Clementine, an, as Hanisch notes, an "inviolable being, an admirable mother figure" Chihuahua, apparently partly of Indian and partly of Mexican descent, sees herself constantly , said Weidinger, exposed to "racist verbal attacks" Earps. Her "dark sexuality" is dangerous as long as she is alive. Logically, only the “white” Anglo-Saxon Clementine is allowed to survive at Ford. Chihuahua, Kitses notes, is "an unfortunate example of the ethnic prejudice that runs through much of Ford's factory." Unlike the whore Dallas in Stagecoach , who turns out to be the true bearer of decency, Chihuahua is prejudiced in the law of the prairie by the moral authority Wyatt Earp from the start. Coyne notes that Earp's sense of morality contains "elements of a concept of racial purity that the film seems to uphold by abstaining from criticism." Wyatt Earp is "in his quiet way" as a racist as Hatfield in Stagecoach and Ethan Edwards in The Black Hawk .

Interpretations of contemporary history

McBride can feel in the film that some of the main participants had only just returned from military service. In addition to dealing with topics that directly affected the audience in real life after the war (such as the destruction of family associations), McBride sees a military background in the character of Wyatt Earp in particular. For him, this is a "keen, serious commander" who embodies primarily military virtues. According to Loew, this leads to a basic mood in the film that he describes as “conservative and paternalistic-authoritarian”.

In this context Loew also mentions time-immanent interpretations of the film that see it as a political parable. Tag Gallagher, for example, equates Wyatt Earp with the United States, which had come from the First World War (Dodge City), had now also won the Second World War (victory over the Clantons), but now had to return to the wilderness in order to be new to orientate; in this interpretation an appeal for isolationist tendencies in American post-war politics.

According to Loew, Peter Biskind has a similar approach: for him, Wyatt would stand for the GIs who return from the Second World War, want to lay down their weapons, but then see that they will be available again in order to be able to ensure the security of the community in the future Have to grab a gun. In this interpretation, the film campaigns for the need for remilitarization of the United States. Loew relativizes, however, that Ford would probably have rejected both interpretations as absurd and inaccurate.

literature

  • Stuart N. Lake : Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal . Pocket Books, New York 1994, 400 (XVI) S., ISBN 0-671-88537-5 (so far no German translation exists)
  • John Baxter: John Ford: His Movies - His Life. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-453-86019-5
  • Michael Coyne: The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western. IB Tauris Publishers. London and New York 1998, ISBN 1-86064-259-4
  • Scott Eyman, Paul Duncan: John Ford - The Complete Films. TASCHEN Verlag, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-8228-3090-9
  • Michael Hanisch: Western - The development of a film genre. Henschelverlag Art and Society Berlin (GDR) 1984.
  • Thomas Jeier: The western film. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-453-86104-3
  • Jim Kitses: Horizons West - Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood. British Film Institute London, New Edition 2004, ISBN 1-84457-050-9
  • Dirk C. Loew: Attempt on John Ford - The Western Films 1939-1964. Verlag Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-2124-X
  • Joseph McBride: Searching for John Ford - A Life. Faber & Faber Ltd. London 2004, ISBN 0-571-22500-4
  • JA Place, Christa Bandmann (Ed.): The Westerns by John Ford. Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-442-10221-9
  • Hans Helmut Prinzler in Film Genres - Western / Ed. By Thomas Koebner . Reclam junior, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-018402-9 ; Ss. 109-115

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ McBride: p. 429
  2. ↑ a b c d Loew: p. 116
  3. ^ A b McBride: p. 430
  4. ^ Eyman: p. 131
  5. ^ McBride: p. 433
  6. ↑ a b c Baxter: p. 118
  7. ↑ A version of this rough cut was found in the UCLA archives . This so-called preview version, commented by the film restorer Robert Gitt, is available together with the cinema version in a special edition on DVD
  8. ↑ a b c Loew: p. 117
  9. ^ McBride: p. 426
  10. ^ A b McBride: p. 436
  11. ^ Website about the broadcasts of the Lux Radio Theater
  12. ↑ a b quoted in: Coyne: p. 34
  13. ↑ a b c d quoted in: Coyne: p. 35
  14. ↑ a b c Place: p. 71
  15. ↑ 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958 . Handbook V of the Catholic film criticism, 3rd edition, Verlag Haus Altenberg, Düsseldorf 1963, p. 111
  16. ↑ Awards for the law of the prairie in the imdb
  17. ↑ a b Hanisch: S, 214
  18. ^ Phil Hardy: The Encyclopedia of Western Movies. Woodbury Press. Minneapolis 1984. ISBN 0-8300-0405-X , p. 158
  19. ↑ a b c Jeier: p. 109
  20. ↑ Joe Hembus : Western Lexicon - 1272 films from 1894-1975 . Hanser Verlag Munich Vienna, 2nd edition 1977, ISBN 3-446-12189-7 , p. 622
  21. ↑ a b Loew: p. 122
  22. ^ Baxter: p. 114
  23. ^ A b Walter C. Clapham: The Movie Treasury: Western Movies - The Story of the West on Screen. Galley Press. London 1979. ISBN 0-904644-88-X , p. 85
  24. ↑ Georg Seeßlen : Western - History and mythology of western films. Schüren Presseverlag 1995, ISBN 3-89472-421-8 . P. 79
  25. ↑ Kitses: p. 55
  26. ↑ a b Hanisch: p. 210
  27. ↑ a b c d Eyman: p. 135
  28. ↑ a b Place: p. 63
  29. ↑ a b c Kitses: p. 56
  30. ↑ a b Place: p. 62
  31. ↑ a b Jeier: p. 108
  32. ^ Loew: p. 121
  33. ↑ Hans Helmut Prinzler: Fau strecht der Prärie / Tombstone In: Bernd Kiefer, Norbert Grob (Ed.): Film genres: Western. Philipp Reclam jun. Stuttgart 2003. ISBN 3-15-018402-9 , p. 109
  34. ^ Coyne: p. 40
  35. ↑ a b Loew: p. 120
  36. ↑ a b Hanisch: p. 211
  37. ^ Walter C. Clapham: The Movie Treasury: Western Movies - The Story of the West on Screen. Galley Press. London 1979. ISBN 0-904644-88-X , p. 84
  38. ↑ a b c Hanisch: p. 213
  39. ↑ a b c Loew: p. 119
  40. ↑ a b Loew: p. 118
  41. ↑ a b Coyne: p. 34
  42. ^ Philip French: Westerns - Aspects of a Movie Genre. Secker & Warburg in association with the British Film Institute, London 1973, ISBN 0-436-09933-0 , p. 157.
  43. ↑ Georg Seeßlen: Western - History and mythology of western films. Schüren Presseverlag 1995, ISBN 3-89472-421-8 , p. 80.
  44. ^ John H. Lenihan: Showdown - Confronting Modern America in the Western Film. University of Illinois Press. Urbana and Chicago 1979. ISBN 0-252-01254-2 , p. 125
  45. ↑ a b Kitses: p. 60
  46. ^ McBride: p. 418
  47. ↑ Kitses p. 62
  48. ^ Place: p. 63
  49. ^ Place: p. 68
  50. ^ Place: p. 75
  51. ↑ Joe Hembus: Western Lexicon - 1272 films from 1894-1975 . Hanser Verlag Munich Vienna, 2nd edition 1977, ISBN 3-446-12189-7 , p. 624
  52. ↑ a b Place: p. 69
  53. ↑ Kitses: p. 59
  54. ↑ a b Baxter: p. 117
  55. ^ Baxter: p. 116
  56. ^ Place: p. 67
  57. ^ Baxter: p. 210
  58. ^ McBride: p. 423
  59. ^ Coyne: p. 48
  60. ↑ Martin Weidinger: National Myths - Male Heroes: Politics and Gender in American Westerns. Campus Verlag Frankfurt / New York 2006, ISBN 3-593-38036-6 . P. 109
  61. ↑ Kitses: p. 57
  62. ^ Coyne: p. 39
  63. ^ McBride: p. 432
  64. ↑ a b Loew: p. 124
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on September 5, 2007 in this version .